Coda
by Brighid45
Summary: One-shot written by InTheHouse and set within the Treatment 'verse. In moving from one home to another, Roz comes to an understanding over an old issue, with House's help.


_**(Written by InTheHouse, and posted with her permission-this is a look back at Greg and Roz's move-in to the farmhouse. I hope you enjoy it. Many thanks to ItH for her generosity in providing this lovely story. -B)**_

"What about here for the piano?" Roz took a step back, tilting her head and brushing her hair back away from her face as if that would help her see the overall blueprint more clearly. "It needs to be a focal point of the room."

They were in the farm house. Not yet their house, but she was excited deep down about making it so. Never in her life had she been included in arranging a new house along with someone else. Always before, either she had been on the outside, living in others' homes, or then she had gone through the process herself at the old place in the desperate loneliness while trying to pretend that didn't matter. She was enjoying this walk-through of the empty rooms with Greg, thinking about and planning it together.

Greg didn't reply immediately, and she looked from the proposed spot over to him just in time to catch a flash of the old uncertainty and fear in his eyes, fear that he would do something to push her away. "If you'd rather have another spot, that's okay," she tried to reassure him. "Just let me know what you're thinking."

He looked from her around the blank room. She could see the tension in him, a new tension that hadn't been there a minute ago. There had been a little basic change anxiety, of course, but until now, he had seemed to be enjoying this process as much as she did, even if he'd never admit it. Right now, he looked like he had tripped across an old path that he had tried since to forget existed. She walked over to put a gentle hand on his arm, reminding him she was there. "What is it, _amante_?"

"You can pick where the piano goes." His voice was brusque, almost harsh, as he pulled away. "I'll go look at the bedroom. You can finish up here." He stopped a stride away. "Only not too close to a door or a window or an exterior wall. It messes with the tuning. Other than that, your choice." He headed up the stairs, his steps sounded especially uneven in their echo at the moment.

_What the hell?_ She looked back at the blank living room as if it would supply the answer. Her suggested spot, she realized now, was too close to the front door, too exposed to drafts. But why had he been afraid to tell her that?

Abruptly, memory surged in like a song not heard nor thought of in months. Greg sneaking the piano in with Gene as an accomplice to surprise her on his return from surgery. Her immediate reaction to her things being rearranged, not even able to remain in the same room with the new arrival, afraid of saying something she might regret. They had talked later after he had gone off to talk with Sarah, and she had tried to explain what the house and its order meant to her and reassure him that they just needed to be careful to talk in the future about things in advance that impacted both of them, but admittedly, it had taken her some weeks to come to peace with the piano dropped unexpectedly into her house.

Of course, she had come to peace with it long since, had forgotten about the changed furniture scheme, and even had grown to love the instrument. Who couldn't, watching him play, seeing his expression soften, hearing all he could never say outright pouring through his fingers so eloquently? She had once or twice felt a little guilty about throwing such cold water at first onto his gift, knowing that he had only been trying to surprise her, to add the most positive part of his former life into their new joint one. But he had seemed to relax, too, had played for her by request and spontaneously, and she had thought the piano conflict was closed, ancient history. Maybe he had thought so, too, until her suggestion stirred up the ashes which, apparently, had not quite gone out. He remembered it now, but he was afraid to counter her suggestion, afraid to cause any new piano waves.

Furniture selection could wait. She trotted up the stairs briskly and found him in the future bedroom, just looking at the wall. When she touched his arm again, she could feel him trembling faintly. "I'm sorry, _amante_," she said softly. "I'd forgotten all about that other time. It's okay, really. I love it now. We'll put it wherever it needs to go."

He turned to look at her, analyzing her sincerity, and she met his look squarely. "I mean it. That was another time. We've grown together more since then. And I apologize for reacting then like I did and staying out of the room instead of simply talking to you at first. I know you meant well."

"It was the one thing that had always stayed with me," he said, almost to the wall instead of her.

She tightened her grip possessively. "Wrong. I will."

That brought his eyes back to her. "You aren't a thing," he objected, calling the technical point, but she felt him relax a little under her hand. "That's not what I meant, anyway. I wanted us to have it."

"I know. I didn't realize about the drafts and placement, either; it really did need to disrupt the room that much. But it's not an issue now. It shouldn't have been as big an issue as I made it then, but I was still learning to live with someone else. Yes, you should have told me, but all you really did was move some furniture. Easy enough to rearrange later together if we'd wanted. But I liked the thing there in the middle of everything, once I really started to listen to you playing it."

He looked back toward the door. "So why are we wasting time up here?" She chuckled and tucked her arm through his as they started for the hall and the stairs. "Besides," he continued, and she heard the challenging note creep in under his tone, pushing, probing, "I just had some furniture moved around, like you said. Nothing permanently changed. It wasn't like I cut your furniture into pieces to rebuild you new after you had specifically said how much the old meant to you."

She hit a halt so quickly that she pulled against him as he stopped a half stride after she did. "You're not talking about the piano there. You're talking about the bathrobe, aren't you?" Her first impulse was hurt, her second amazement that he could have dissembled so well all these months and hidden his true reaction. "You don't like it?"

"That's not the point," he insisted.

"Do you like it?" They were facing each other in the hall now. Roz felt part of herself starting to tremble deep inside. All those hours trying to please him, planning the surprise, the perfect symbolism of it, the old and the new together as they went on into life hand in hand, not seamlessly but joined. "Greg, please. I need to know."

"Women," he snorted. "Yes, I like it." That was sincere even if impatient, and she relaxed again, believing him, ready to listen now for the rest of it. "But it did occur to me once or twice that you did - you and Sarah both did - exactly what you lectured me up and down that I should never do now that I was married, how I should always discuss changes in their things with my partner in advance and respect their boundaries and input. In fact, you did it to a greater extent."

"That wasn't anywhere near the same thing," she started to protest, then trailed off.

"Wasn't it? How were they different?"

Her mind was analyzing at full speed now, even if she was aware as she sometimes was that her full speed would ever be slower than his. "That was a present." But so had the piano been. She knew that now. He had been giving it not to her but to them, a joint gift into their new life. "There were practical considerations. You needed a new robe."

"You needed some music," he countered.

She fell into silence, thinking. _But it wasn't the same thing at all, really,_ her mind insisted, but the more she thought about it, the more she saw similarities. She had disrupted his familiar environment and insisted on the change without consulting him. In fact, as he had said, she had done it even more than he had with the piano. He had acted without knowledge of how she would feel; she had acted in full knowledge of his opinion and still thought her way would be better. She had been caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement of how wonderful this present would be for him. No doubt, so had he. Slowly, she sat down on the top step and patted the one beside her, and he joined her. She could feel the tension in him again, half afraid to push on this yet wanting to get it out there, too. As long as they were stirring old ashes, might as well stamp out all the embers still alive.

The stunning difference, she realized, had been in the reception once all was revealed. He did like the robe, liked it immediately. He was always wearing it. She herself had gone into the next room, not even able to look at the piano and the enforced change in her environment at first. Her acceptance had come gradually. His had been immediate once he saw the result. For all that she - and yes, Sarah - had talked together and even joked about how much he disliked change, he had accepted enforced, unexpected change better than she had. Furthermore, he was right. The furniture could have just been moved back or rearranged differently. She had cut up the robe.

He sat beside her, letting her think. She reached out again to take his arm, feeling the strength in it, running down it to his wonderful, sensitive hands. Pianist's hands.

"You're right," she said finally. "There are similarities between the two, and I never saw them at the time or since. I was caught up being excited about what I was planning, thinking that this would be good for you. I even did know how you felt. If I . . . trivialized your emotions at times on the way to my plan, I'm sorry, _amante_."

He shrugged, immediately changing the subject even as she felt his fingers tighten in hers, a squeeze that communicated clearly the appreciation of the admission that he never would be able to say outright. "So we both screwed up. I made you have a piano, you made me have a robe. Guess that makes us even."

She returned the pressure of his hand. "I do love the piano now," she assured him. "We're both going to screw up at times, Greg. But that doesn't mean we don't love each other."

He stood, using the railing with his uncaptured hand but not requiring as much assistance as he had before the surgery to rise. His leg was getting better. _We're getting better,_ Roz realized. _Bit by bit, with a few stumbles along the way, we're learning how to make a life together._

"So let's hurry up and get this theoretical furniture placed. I'm hungry." Greg started on down the stairs.

"What a surprise," she said with a smile. "Let's finish the living room, then we'll pick up a pizza on the way home."

Later that night, back at the old house, she finished putting the pizza leftovers away, dropping a nibble to the cat as she tucked the box up for tomorrow, then walked into the living room. Greg was playing. She let out a deep, satisfied sigh, realizing suddenly that this place about which she had once felt so possessive now felt like an old set of clothes that she was about to replace and was looking forward to passing along to charity for the next needy applicant. She didn't need it herself anymore.

Greg looked up from the keys. "What's wrong now?" he griped.

"Nothing."

"You sighed."

"It was a good sigh. I was just thinking that I'll be glad to get out of this place. It's part of the past now. I'm ready for somewhere that's truly ours."

He kept playing, but his features relaxed again. Roz abruptly realized that he was wearing the Christmas robe. An imp surged up inside her, and she walked up behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders, feeling the fabric. "You know, actually, I could undo everything with the robe. Sarah saved the pieces of the old one we didn't use for trim. She wanted them for her rag bag. All I have to do is take this one apart and sew that one back together." She started to slip it down his shoulders.

He squirmed away. "Hands off!" he snapped. She smiled. "Sarah saved the old worn-out bits?" Roz nodded. He snorted. "Sentimental women, hanging onto battered old things once their time is past."

He kept playing, and Roz sat down next to him, as always careful not to interfere with his freedom of movement for his arms, but she loved being close to him like this as he played, almost physically feeling the music. Yes, she did love this piano.

He looked down at her thoughtfully, then switched pieces to one she had never heard before, though his musical education was vastly beyond hers. The intensity in his eyes and hands at the moment struck her. "What are you thinking, _amante_?" she asked.

"There was one other woman years ago whom I wrote a piece for." Roz tightened up, feeling the quick, old stab of inferiority, but he continued. "She never heard it, and I never gave it to her. I wrote it alone while I was sitting around my apartment on the night she had a big party. She specifically had asked me not to come." She put a hand briefly on his back, acknowledging the rejection, the bitter, former solitude. How well she knew that, even if hers hadn't been identical to his. "That was the only other time in my life I ever wrote something for a woman." There was the faintest emphasis on other, yet still firm enough that she couldn't have imagined it.

He played on. The piece was smooth, melodic, always finding the center of itself again when it occasionally rippled off into conflict. She had heard him play far more challenging things, far more technical things, but in its steady, forthright simplicity, this music also was beautiful.

And then she understood.

**_Many thanks for reading. If you're so inclined, a review would be most welcome._**


End file.
